Esplanade Theatre May 29, 8pm

Disturbing, poetic, cosmic. Simultaneously, performance art, installation and dance, Planet [Wanderer] is a post-humanist performance experience that defies categorisation; a harmonious marriage of scenic design and choreography, where bodies shape the space and the textured environment guides the dancers’ movements. 

Ominous thuds echo through the thick darkness of the Esplanade Theatre. The shadowy stage glitters with black sand or meteor dust. It gently descends, a snowfall of crystalline volcanic ash. In the dim lighting, the floor subtly shifts. Is it a trick of the light? A breeze? A buried body? This uncanny conundrum sucks the audience into deep concentration; it is hypnotic. 

A shadow comes to life on this seemingly barren land. Amorphous bodies combine in a slow, sinuous fashion, evoking the same fascinated unease one gets from watching a pile of squirming slugs sliding over each other. The dust-covered dancers plant themselves in the ash, like seaweed on the ocean floor swayed by the current, bending their bodies to extremes, they seem to defy gravity. They are not human; they are swirls, dashes, exclamation marks punctuating the poetry of the space.     

French-Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet is famed for his artistic collaborations across music, visual arts, fashion, theatre and cinema.  Last in Singapore almost 14 years ago, he is perhaps best known to Singaporeans as the choreographer of the short film ANIMA (2019), released on Netflix, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Radiohead’s singer-songwriter Thom Yorke, for his solo album of the same name.

Jalet’s distilled choreographic explorations that push the boundaries of the body’s physicality, combined with Japanese visual artist Kohei Nawa’s set design, create an otherworldly performance. Wave after wave of images and sensations wash over the audience as they are transported across realms.  Plunging the audience to the depths of the ocean and launching them into outer space as smoke swirls up from the dry ground around the wanderers’ feet.